ur way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How
are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to
St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any
other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?"
it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you
heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might
suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a
village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one
of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a
lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!"

How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I
cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in
this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not
wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language
than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I
have heard in any American city.

CHAPTER XXXI

"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY

The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes
spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and
of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that
the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I
have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme
dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not
know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive
tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in
Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.

A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice
plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ
somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost
incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long
practice, to understand it.

A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the
message as it was delivered:

"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come
shum?" (To get the gulla effect t